David Chang, with Alden
Carter, has
written an autobiography that is remarkable and touching for its
personal insight. It skillfully integrates historical and political
events in China and Taiwan with the life of a remarkable man. Most of
all, it's a good read.

--Thomas J. Bellows, Univ. of
Texas at San
Antonio

This
remarkable memoir of a Chinese boyhood brings alive David Wen-wei
Chang's childhood in a small village in North China and his family's
trials during a 1930's famine and recounts how their lives were torn
apart in the struggle between the Chinese Communists and the
Nationalists. Throughout, David's love of family, home, and learning
will delight the reader.

--David D. Buck, Univ. of
Wisconsin, Milwaukee

This
is the gentle, touching story of a traditional Chinese family whose
lives were shattered by war and revolution. Chang (political science,
emeritus, Univ. of Wisconsin, Oshkosh) tells of constant struggle; of
struggling to stay alive through famine, poverty, and being the
youngest child (b. 1929), struggling through the traditional Chinese
educational system and then war, revolution, and the Communist
takeover, struggling to adapt to a new life in Taiwan and the United
States, and finally struggling with the reality of returning to China
and the family he left behind. Some readers might be put off by Chang's
often apologetic and forgiving nature toward those who hurt him
(ranging from an abusive father who beat his mother and tried to
smother him as a child to friends who spied on him and his family for
the Communists), but others will see that his choices are clearly the
product of a traditional Confucian background. Luckily, Chang's
positive attitude gives the book its heart. Recommended for general
readers in history as well as memoir.—Melissa Aho, Univ. of
Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis

--School
Library Journal

The
Scholar and the Tiger
is at
once a compelling family saga, thriller, social history, and spiritual
journey. Written by a leading China scholar in partnership with a noted
author, the story brings to life some of the darkest pages in
twentieth-century history while providing surprising insights into the
China of today as an emerging superpower and America’s principal global
rival. David
Wen-wei Chang
was born in Zhou-Bien village, Shaanxi Province, in 1929 as famine
gripped northern China, taking the lives of
countless peasants, including his father. Only the superhuman efforts
of his iron-willed mother kept the family alive. The eldest son,
Wen-po, joined the army. Eighteen years Wen-wei’s senior, Wen-po fought
bandits, opium smugglers, the Japanese, and Mao’s Communists, becoming
known as “Tiger Chang.”

Meanwhile,
Wen-wei—a
brilliant scholar from childhood—seemed destined for a career in the
age-old mandarin tradition of civil service. But war intervened,
forcing him to evacuate his ill mother and two sisters-in-law and their
children only days before the Communist assault on Beijing. In
Shanghai, they were reunited with Wen-po, now a leading Guomindang
general who commanded the city’s final defenses. Wen-wei refused
evacuation to Taiwan, insisting on caring for his mother and making the
best life he could under the Communists. But a day after the occupation
of the city, a terrified friend told Wen-wei that Wen-po had been left
behind and was hiding in the friend’s apartment, putting all of their
lives at risk.

What follows has all
the drama of a spy novel: narrow escapes and rescues, treachery and
blackmail, and a final wrenching irony that would tear Wen-wei from his
family and homeland. Only after thirty years in America, with a new
life as university professor David Chang, is he allowed to return to
China to learn the fate of his mother and loved ones—and perhaps to
heal his broken heart.

From
Rowman & Littlefieldwww.rowmanlittlefield.com

The
Scholar and the Tiger:
a Memoir of Famine and War in Revolutionary China